Persuade Lord
I could use some good text here... Persuade lord This approach offers three benefits: *+5 RtR (Right to Rule) - nice but useless... *you don't need to be at war with the targeted lords faction. You only need to talk to him, when no one of his faction is nearby *the lord keeps his current army (and prisoners) There is a downside as well: *you will loose 3 relations with the king of the lords former faction (... and who cares?) This guide will target upstanding, good-natured and martial lords, as these are the most interesting. It tries to give a small insight whats happening. Yet, without the source code, there are still some dark corners. Now let's start a persuasion with "There is something which I would like to discuss with to you in private." (the "to" is too much as it seems) This is the first test. If your relation with the lord is too low, he will deny the request. The persuasion skill helps here, so you'll need less relationship overall. I believe it's a 1:1 exchange, meaning for each point in persuasion you need one point less in relationship. The minimum requirements for relations are: *upstanding & good-natured = 25 *martial = ??? *bad-tempered = 9 If your relation is too low, the lord will deny your attempt. This won't hurt, just improve your relations and try again. Relations play an important role when evaluating your chance for persuasion. Therefore it is advised to get them as high as possible anyway. "How do you feel about ... ?" The second test. This time it's about the lords relation to his king. If it's too high, he will end the conversation with "Long may he live!". However, if relations are low enough the answer will change. "That is all that I will say on this matter." indicates, that he is willing to say more, but it depends on your persuasion skill. If you try to persuade him and your skill is too low, he quits your persuasion attempt, gets a bit upset and won't talk about it for a short time and you'll lose 1 point in relation with him (unless you are at 100 relation and he is a noble lord). If you succeed, you can now move on to make an argument. It's unclear to me, what influences how many skill points you need for an successful attempt. It might be dependent on the relations of the lord to his king. Thus persuasion negates some of the relation points otherwise you would have to wait until relations go down further. If you are lucky, this test is skipped and you can move on to make an argument. Now make an argument. For upstanding lords there is a specialty, as these lords will let you make an argument (given the above mentioned requirements are met), but won't go any further as long as your RtR is below 20. They will tell you something about strengthen your claim first instead. "I should be king": This argument targets your RtR. At 70 and higher this is the best option for upstanding and martial lords (70 is enough, higher doesn't yield any benefits). If it is below 70 it looses some oomph. If it is below 65 switch to "Commons" for upstanding lords instead and if it's below 50 switch to "Commons" for martial lords. "Commons": This argument targets your honor. It maxes out at 60 honor and gradually looses strength if you are below this. In general this is the best answer for good-natured lords. Less honorable Players(!) with high RtR are better off with the first argument, so. Cunning lords do like this answer as well. "Nobles": Targets your honor as well and behaves like the "Commons" argument. Martial and cunning lords like this argument a tad more more than "Commons" but not by much. "Unify": Never had this to be a good argument. Once a bad-tempered lord liked it (yet was much more interested in the argument of "Land") but denied my ability to do so. Not sure what you will need, maybe it's about the quantity of your lords? "Land": Never a good option even for fiefless noble lords. This and the "Unify" argument seem to be arguments for the less honorable lords, like bad-tempered, sadistic and pitiless. But in general these lords prefer the "Land" argument (how come...?) The choice you make here is not for eternity, if you want to try another option, just choose "Let me phrase that a little differently" the next time you speak to him and choose another option. The lord might comment about this, but I haven't noticed any real impact. Personally I would talk to martial lords about "Commons" as well if my RtR is low as this option is only a little worse than "Nobles" and if it fails, try to increase my RtR instead. The lord will now start to reflect about his current situation and compare it to your offer. First he talks about security. In general this is about the distance between your and the lords fiefs. Obviously a greater distance is worse. It also doesn't matter if the lord owns only a village and thus would loose it anyway. On the good side: The influence of security is not as severe as the others and martial lords even half that influence. The lord also pays attention to his current situation. A badly beaten faction will result in a low score for his current king. Then he talks about relations. The most obvious of this is that your relation to him is a factor here. Furthermore there is some black voodoo magic that factors in the lords which are already at your court. Do you have friends, family members or enemies of said lord in your court? Although noble lords are not quarrelsome, they DO pay attention who is at your court. The same goes for his current king. If you already successfully persuaded a friend, it nets you some bonus here - or a penalty if it was an enemy. As relations have a high impact on your final chance you should try to get this as high as possible. As an example: The impact of relations for good-natured lords can be 5 times (or more!) higher than the impact of security on your final chance. The next step is about the choice you made during your persuasion attempt. Here the lord will say if he agrees with your opinion or not. If you have chosen the "King" argument, he will comment about your RtR. If it is low he will say so. If you chose a honor argument and your honor is low, he will remark about it. By the way: This is the only step which is influenced by your persuasion skill. The final step is a hint to your RtR. As long as your RtR is below 60 you face a penalty here. The text gives some clue about how severe this penalty is. Get your RtR up to 60 and everything is fine. You won't get a bonus if it's higher than this (but as already mentioned it's advisable to get it up to 70 for the "King" argument). Now some hidden magic compares your scores against that of the lords current king and finally a persuasion chance is computed. In the end, you have the choice "It is time for you to make a decision" will compare your chance against a pre-rolled value of the lord (so save-scumming won't get you anywhere). If your chance is higher, you win and the lord switches sides. The pre-rolled value is totally random. That's why in the end you might get a lord against all odds and might loose against another lord no matter what you do. That's the luck component. I believe that the pre-rolled value changes over the course of the game, yet I'm unsure what the trigger is. Also there is no correlation between the personality of a lord and its value. Upstanding lords might get a low value as well as a high one.If you fail the lord won't talk about switching sides for some time. If you choose "No need to decide anything..." nothing happens. You can start the conversation again right away. The most beneficial part is, that you can do this while at peace. But it heavily relies on relations. Do note however, that even noble lords loose relations if their faction gets heavily beaten. Therefore if two nations fight each other and one is loosing quite often it might be worth a shot. A failed attempt to initiate a persuasion has no negative impact (only if the lord says "I told you that's all I have to say" and you loose 1 relation, then you need some time before you are allowed to try it again). Once you force a lord to make a decision however, it will take some time until you are allowed to try it again (or reload a save from before). In a nutshell: *Upstanding lords double the penalty if your RtR is below 60 *Good-natured lords double the influence of relations *Martial lords half the influence of security *RtR should be at 70 - higher than this has no additional effects *Relations boost your chance - the higher the better up to 100 *"King" or "Commons" are in general the best options *honor should be at 60 or above A word about the persuasion skill: As already mentioned it helps with your chosen argument. Strangely it also boosts the score the lord has to his current king. I believe this to be a bug. However, in almost all cases there is a net gain. So it does its job. Yet, I tried to make it clear that it is more important to get relations up to 100 than having a persuasion skill of 0 or 10. Best option is having both of course and it seems that some persuasion skill is necessary to get good-natured and upstanding lords. A word about RtR: There are 20 companions which can give you 3 RtR each. Just hire them, send them away to gather RtR and fire them once they return. You can send one every 4 days. Just note that some companions won't go as long as their "hated" companion is on his/her mission (have a look at the companions site for clarification). This will net you 60 RtR. Marry someone and you get an additional 15. That's 75 RtR without any war (which makes the +5 RtR for persuading a lord quite useless).